


Old friends know best

by bitterf_tta



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon - what canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Panic Attacks, Trolls, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 11:03:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17323823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterf_tta/pseuds/bitterf_tta
Summary: It wasn’t so much that Stiles lied to the rest of the pack. He never told them, per say, that everything came easy to him. The problem was that he seemed to be giving away the impression that everything was. Easy, that is.At some point the rest of the pack had stopped viewing him as the weak human, and started viewing him as the unofficial problem solver. Whether they needed help with school, or help figuring out the latest big bad, or just somewhere to sleep when parents became overwhelming and overbearing, Stiles was all of that. He might bruise more easily, but he was fiercer than most and loyal to a fault.or, Stiles can't sleep and has a panic attack after a fun interaction with trolls. Seriously, trolls.





	Old friends know best

**Author's Note:**

> No clue where in canon this would fall, but everyone is alive and still in Beacon Hills, so probably not at any point.

It wasn’t so much that Stiles lied to the rest of the pack. He never told them, per say, that everything came easy to him. The problem was that he seemed to be giving away the impression that everything was. Easy, that is. He was surprisingly clear headed in crisis situations, always had been, and it served him well now that he had been thrown head first into the pool of scary that was the supernatural.

Your best friend becomes a werewolf? No biggie, tie him up and teach him control (and maybe get rid of some of your aggressions on the way, who can really blame you?)

You get kidnapped and beaten up, if not tortured? Don’t tell anyone, they’ll worry, just show up last minute and kick some ass.

The hot-as-hell but also terrifying guy you barely know show up and want you to amputate his arm? That’s cool, you can handle it.

During his time as a pack member, officially and unofficially, Stiles has been through it, over it, and under it. He has been injured numerous times (not always noticed by his friends), he has been terrified and petrified (literally and figuratively), he has been beaten and hunted and haunted and possessed and it has all more or less sucked.

At some point the rest of the pack had stopped viewing him as the weak human, and started viewing him as the unofficial problem solver. Whether they needed help with school, or help figuring out the latest big bad, or just somewhere to sleep when parents became overwhelming and overbearing, Stiles was all of that. He might bruise more easily, but he was fiercer than most and loyal to a fault.

So perhaps they could be forgiven for thinking that he was invincible. He had, after all, helped sell that lie. Scott sometimes seemed like he could see through him, but then he would be distracted by something else and Stiles would be left to lick his wounds, alone again.

Insomnia had always been his first sign that things were getting bad. Before the anxiety and the panic attacks, he would find himself lying awake for hours at night, tossing and turning and cursing anyone who would listen. If he was lucky he would get a few hours here and there, but even then he would wake up exhausted and buzzing with energy that he didn’t have. He functioned pretty well on no sleep, all things considered, and if he talked a little more and a little faster, if he was just a bit quicker rushing into danger, then either no one noticed, or no one cared enough to call him out on it.

It didn’t matter, much, he told himself as he woke up sweaty after yet another nightmare. Everyone was safe, and if he had a little bit of insomnia (at this point he was still lying about how bad it was getting), then hell, they had survived worse than that in the past.

School was getting harder. Between pulling all-nighters because Scott or Derek or Lydia or anyone else in the pack needed help, and not sleeping at all even when he had the chance, he had been running himself ragged. He would fall asleep in class, nod off even when his history teacher was talking about the Berlin blockade, which was really interesting, or his English teacher talked about homo-erotic undertones in classic fiction, which he never thought he would hear an _actual teacher_ say. Nothing could hold his interest.

Then there was the random spacing out. He would be listening to someone talking, having a conversation with Erica about that hot guy in their econ class, or with Scott about the new Marvel film, and then the world would fade out and he would come back seconds or minutes later to expecting eyes, and realise he had missed a question, or a comment, and have to find his way back to the conversation.

So yeah, things were not great. Not sleeping didn’t exactly help, and not sleeping made everything else so much harder, which made the insomnia worse, and Stiles felt like he had been dragged three ways around the world, weary in a way that he couldn’t recall ever being.

The latest big bad wasn’t big at all, and not necessarily bad, but did enough mischief that eventually they had to deal with it. They were trolls – not in the “Troll – troll in the dungeon!” that J.K. Rowling portrayed it, but in the Norse myth way, small and insistent and breaking people’s belongings because they thought they weren’t being respected. Which, to be fair, they weren’t. They were tiny and kind of ugly, with beards so long that they tripped on them, and kind of smelly too, in that way where you’re not sure if it’s dusty or dirty but either way definitely is not pleasant.

Stiles was so _done with this._ He had told Scott as much, too.

“They’ve not even hurt anyone! Come on, Scotty, this is beneath us! We’re superheroes, not pest control!”

And Scott, of course, had none of it. He just looked at Stiles with his puppy dog eyes, said something about “emotional hurt” and “cherished belongings” (though maybe not with exactly those words, because Scott wasn’t exactly known for his great vocabulary) and of course Stiles had to help.

So there he was, in the preserve (why did all the evils move in there?), in the middle of the night, in the rain, trying to keep up with the _freaking_ wolves who didn’t seem nearly as uncomfortable as he was.

Erica and Lydia were bickering about something, and Derek was sporadically rolling his eyes at them. Stiles stumbled on a tree root, and Isaac snickered at him.

“Freaking wolves,” Stiles muttered, not bothering to keep his volume down as they would be able to hear him anyway. “You suck.”

The rain was getting in his eyes, and he was soaked to the bone, his shoes squeaking with every step, adding to his misery. They had been walking for a good forty five minutes before Derek put a hand up, indicating that they were approaching the trolls’ den. Erica quietened halfway through a sentence, prompting Lydia to look extremely smug, as if that was proof she had won their argument.

They spread out, circling the den. According to Deaton, a banishing spell should be enough to get rid of the trolls, but things were never that easy for them, and within two minutes Stiles found himself pushed to the ground by at least five of the little shits, getting scratched and bitten (bitten!) and overall not having a very good time.

He got one with his baseball bat, kicked another one away, and then rolled around, crushing one more in the process. He might be making a noise that wasn’t all that flattering, but he managed to get the last two off himself too, and immediately took inventory of the situation. Scott and Derek were holding their own without problem, as was Lydia and Erica who worked really well together, despite their previous argument.

Isaac was about to be overpowered, so Stiles sprinted over to him, grabbing hold of one of the trolls and throwing it away with all his might. One jumped from Isaac onto him, its little hands clawing onto his face and he struggled with it until Isaac finally managed to help him.

“Thanks,” Stiles said, though he thought that Isaac should be thanking him.

Eventually they had managed to beat down enough of the trolls (and seriously, how many of them were there?) that the rest seemed to give up. Lydia set fire to their den for good measure.

“Hopefully that should be enough,” she said, staring at the flames with what was almost adoration.

Seriously, that girl loved some gasoline.

It was nearing three in the morning, so instead of going home the entire pack made it back to Derek’s loft, falling on top of each other in the coach and most of them out like a light.

Stiles hadn’t even closed his eyes, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He felt wired in a way that had him vibrating, and the scratches all over him were burning.

“’m just gonna clean that up,” he muttered to Scott who was next to him, and stumbled into the bathroom.

In the sharp light, he looked terrible. How anyone could fail to notice the dark bruises under his eyes was beyond him. At least most of his gashes were on his arms and legs, places that could easily be hidden under long sleeves and pant legs until they faded away. The gashes on his face wouldn’t be so easily hidden. Four claw marks stretched from his forehead down to his chin, barely missing his eyes. The deep red was startling against his pale face, and suddenly it was all he could see.

The world was closing in on itself, his chest tightening and heart rising in his throat. He let out a choked sob, trying to remember to breathe, why couldn’t he breathe-

He hit the floor with a thud, crawling up against the wall and folding up, trying to make himself as small as possible. His breathing was coming in gasps, no oxygen seemed to reach his lungs, his vision was fuzzy and static, and trying to blink it away just made it worse-

He was dying, this was it. Was there poison in the trolls’ claws? Shouldn’t someone else have noticed? But he _couldn’t breathe_ , and his heart was beating so fast and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, shit shit he couldn’t breathe-

There were hands on his shoulders, he faintly realised, and a voice that seemed impossibly faraway. It was calm, and Stiles clung to it like a shipwrecked crew to a rock.

“-in and out, come on, Stiles, you’ve got this, just breathe with me, in, out.”

The voice kept talking and eventually he managed to follow it, his tightly clenched muscles relaxing and finally feeling his vision clear enough that he could make out Scott’s face in front of him.

“You back with me?”

He nodded, focusing on his breathing, in, and out, in, out. A glass was pushed into his hands, and he drank the water gratefully, his hands shaking so much that he had to use both of them just to hold the glass.

Scott was quiet then, all gentle hands and soft touches, placing a blanket around Stiles but not tightening it, knowing what would make him feel better and what would make him feel claustrophobic better than anyone.

It took a long while for the tears to stop, but Scott just stayed there, letting Stiles cry into his shoulder. He wondered dimly where the rest of the pack were, how much they had heard, but the warm hand rubbing his back was enough to distract him from worrying about it.

Eventually, they stood up, Scott helping Stiles to keep his balance and supporting him out of the bathroom, past the living room and into the kitchen. There were two cups of the tea settled on the table, but the room was blessedly void of people. Stiles sat down, stared at his hands curled around the cup. For a while, neither of them spoke.

“’m sorry,” Stiles got out eventually, once his limbs didn’t feel so disconnected, once he had stopped trembling so badly.

“Don’t be,” Scott said, earnest as ever. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know – why didn’t I know it was this bad? When did it get this bad?”

He was fumbling in a way he normally wouldn’t, and that more than anything made it obvious how shaken he was. Stiles felt guilty, his throat clenching. Scott had enough on his mind without dealing with Stiles’ stupid panic attacks, and insomnia, and how pathetic he was, how was he so-

“You’re not, Stiles,” Scott said, reaching over the table and placing his coarse, warm, gentle hands over Stiles’. “Don’t you ever think that. When did it get this bad?”

“I guess-“ Stiles started, his voice coarse, “-I guess I haven’t really been sleeping.” Scott nodded, prompting him to go on. “I just… I can’t. I’m so tired all the time, but I can’t sleep. Every time I try-“

He faltered, quiet for long enough that Scott squeezed his hands tight, letting him know that he should continue.

“I keep seeing you dead,” Stiles finally admitted. “If I manage to fall asleep, I have nightmares. They haven’t been this bad in… not since…”

_Not since mom died._

And Scott, the boy he had been friends with since they had baby teeth and occasionally peed their bed at night, he got it. Had been there for all of it, knew how fiercely Stiles cared about those he loved, and how petrified he was at the thought of losing them.

“I’m sorry,” Scott said, rubbing his thumb on the back of Stiles’ hand. “I didn’t know.”

He didn’t tell Stiles off for not telling him earlier, didn’t make him feel any guiltier than he already did. Instead, he sat there until the trembling stopped completely, until the occasional hiccoughs ended and the tears dried. Until the tea was cold and Stiles was warm.

“Let’s try to sleep,” Scott said, standing up. “We’ll wake you up if you get a nightmare.”

Stiles was so exhausted, that sounded wonderful, and listlessly stood up, following Scott back into the living room and settling into the hole of the coach that had been kept for them. The rest of the pack might be asleep, or they might not be, he wasn’t paying attention anymore at this point, so tired his eyes wouldn’t stay open. Scott cuddled up around him, the soft breaths in his neck soothing and helping Stiles fall asleep faster than he had in – weeks? Months?

True to his word, Scott woke him up every time the nightmares started, before the cold sweats started, whispering soft words until Stiles calmed down enough to fall back asleep.

After that night, things got better. Every night, Stiles would find himself sharing his bed with another pack member, no words exchanged, just the support he needed without any expectations, any explanations.

When he finally joined Lydia and Erica in one of their silly arguments, two weeks after that night in the forest, he swore that Scott had never smiled as brightly, and even Derek looked pleased. Maybe he didn’t need to do this all alone. He was, after all, pack.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are everything. And I apologise for any accidental British-ness, I tried to minimise it.


End file.
